Our long awaited fourth child arrived this evening. She came into the world at 8 pounds, 9.8 ounces and 21 inches long. Mom and baby are both doing great. If you have the bandwidth, you can see video of Margaret Ashley on the home page.

The first rule of seeing X-Men: don’t see it at a $2 theater. The second rule of seeing X-Men: by all means do so. I’ve never gotten into the X-Men comics, though I have enough friends who are rabid X-Men fans that I’ve absorbed a bit of the mythos vicariously. I found myself wondering repeatedly through the film whether it would be more fun for one who was already crazy about X-Men or for the tyro. The former get the joys of seeing their beloved characters translated wonderfully well to the big screen. Hugh Jackman is a great Wolverine. Cyclops kicks just as much bum as one would expect. Ray Park (Darth Maul) does a great job as Toad. But for someone who isn’t familiar with the X-Men, the pleasure of entering this complex, very human world await. There is relational depth that one would expect to find in novels, rather than comics. There are interesting characters, who by dint of their very individual powers, are thrust up against each other in intriguing ways. And there are, of course, lots of special effects and Patrick Stewart holding the whole show together. But regardless of which particular pleasures you derive from the film, it’s well worth seeing.

Well, the new G4 rolled in today, and I spent the evening after the kids went to bed getting it set up and going. The good: it’s blazingly fast, and will only get more so once I have it going with OS X which actually supports both processors. Both iMovie and Deus Ex, my test applications this evening, perform hugely better than on the G3. The bad: the DVD drive doesn’t appear to like my burned CDs, nor, for some reason, does it seem eager to play DVD movies. Also, the Radeon card’s drivers still apparently need some work, as Deus Ex has some extraordinarily ugly graphics artifacts. But overall it’s a beautifully engineered machine, with some lovely peripherals; the Apple Pro mouse is an absolute beauty, and just needs those little grips on the side to actually be buttons to make it perfect.

I was writing to Dad McMains yesterday and realized that a few things I mentioned there hadn’t really made it onto Ruminations yet. So here are a couple of paragraphs from that missive:

The other kiddos are doing well. Kathy and Emily have
been having some really good, heart-to-heart talks
lately. She’s starting to turn into a little person,
rather than just a kid! Since Emily has started doing
school at home again this fall, Abby has been eager to
join in and do some school as well. Kathy’s been
trying to come up with good stuff for Abby to do, but
she’s still young enough that she needs a lot of
guidance and help. Emily’s doing great with going off
to the schoolroom and working on her assignment for an
hour at a time. We’re often in there working together,
now that I’ve started my two days a week at home.
Liam’s still charging around the house, being adorable
and getting into everything. His new favorite toys are
the train cars from a model train set Kathy picked up
cheaply at a garage sale. Unfortunately, the cars
aren’t designed with 22 month olds in mind, and are
rapidly becoming less railworthy. Good thing they were
cheap.

My recent fun project has been getting into video
editing. We bought a digital camcorder, and I’ve been
experimenting with Apple’s iMovie software, which is a
load of fun. I’ve also ordered a G4, which I’ll be
funding by selling the G3 and the iBook, since work
has provided me with a laptop. (Dell, unfortunately.)
Anyway, the video work is a load of fun. Once I put
something worthwhile together, I’ll post it on the
website and let you know.

I’ve just added some code to Ruminations, inspired by a similar feature on Brian Carnell’s web site, which allows you to click on the icons next to any of the stories and see a list of other stories in that category. This makes it super easy to read book reviews, if that’s what’s you’re interested in, movie reviews, if that’s what you’re after, etc. Hooray for Conversant!

Remember Zork? You know, “Go north. Get sword. Kill troll with sword.” Zork was among the best known of a genre of games known as text adventures. Though for the vast majority of people, technically more elaborate games have replaced these prose-intensive efforts, there is still an active community of people on the Internet developing them. The highlight of the year for this group is the Annual Interactive Fiction Competition, which anybody can be a part of by playing and judging the games, and which starts today. There are 53 entrants this year, a new record for the competition, and while there are bound to be some stinkers, there are also invariably several gems among the lot. This quirky art/entertainment form is especially intriguing to me because it is one of the few forms of interactive entertainment that can be completely conceived and realized by a single person, which makes for some very interesting results at times.

Since moving to San Marcos, Steve Johnson and I have been playing in the coffee shops pretty regularly. We have been calling ourselves “The Outlanders,” which was the name of Steve’s band in Denton. However, the band there has carried on in his absence, and has asked to retain the name, so we’re trying to figure out what to call ourselves. Travis Schrank has now joined us on percussion, so we’re now a three piece ensemble featuring guitar, mountain dulcimer, pennywhistles, bodhran, banjo, cello, congas, and soon hammered dulcimer. We do celtic, folk, bluegrass, alternative, and whatever else catches our fancy at the moment. So, if you have any good ideas, let us know by replying to this entry.

Our friends Camilo and Barbra Ardila today had their second boy, Micah Denton Ardila. Both he and mom are doing fine; apparently the delivery was straightforward. We’re planning to go visit them in a few hours, once Barbra gets a little bit of time to rest. Congratulations, Ardilas! Camilo is the Assistant Pastor of the new church, by the way, so between their efforts and our own, we’ll be boosting church attendence a fair percentage before we even begin to meet.